From David Gaughran:

I was at the London Book Fair last week – and I’ll be blogging about that soon – when the news broke that David Mamet is to self-publish his next book.

His reasons? ”Publishing is like Hollywood—nobody ever does the marketing they promise.”

While I think it’s great that someone as high-profile as David Mamet is self-publishing, I was very disappointed to find out the way he’s doing it.

. . . .

Literary agents in particular must be worried about what that means for their future, which explains their ludicrous reactions when someone like Barry Eisler states the above. However, a company called Argo Navis – a publisher-owned distributor – has come to their rescue, providing them with a way to re-insert themselves in the chain between self-publishing author and reader. And get their cut of course.

Mamet is represented by a major literary agency – ICM Partners – who are just one of many agencies to have signed a deal with Perseus Books-owned Argo Navis.

What Do Argo Navis Offer?

Essentially, Argo Navis are a distributor. They offer a portal through which authors’ work can be distributed to all the various retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Kobo.

In exchange for this relatively trivial service, Argo Navis take a 30% cut. You read that right. After the retailer takes their standard cut (usually also 30%), Argo Navis take another 30% before passing on payments.

Obviously, this is massively overpriced compared to distributors like Smashwords or Draft2Digital, who only take 10%, and especially so when you compare the cost of going direct to retailers like Amazon (it’s free). But the problems with Argo Navis don’t end there.

Services like cover design, editing, formatting, scanning, and conversion are not included in this hefty price tag – but are available for a premium. Who provides those services? According to their website, it’s “third party specialists.”

. . . .

Why Are Literary Agents Using Argo Navis?

Argo Navis has been very clever with how they market their service. It’s pitched as agent-curated self-publishing - hey, it’s a step up from assisted self-publishing. Argo Navis don’t (and won’t) deal with authors directly, and will only accept titles for distribution submitted by literary agents.

This in turn allows agents to tap into what I call The Myth of the Segregated Marketplace - where authors believe that the visibility challenges resulting from the open nature of digital distribution are exclusively faced by self-published authors. Of course, those challenges are faced by all authors – however they publish. And given the abysmal rankings of books published via Argo Navis, it’s not a challenge that they are handling well.

But what’s in it for the agent? For starters, royalty checks come to their offices first (after Argo Navis have taken their considerable bite). This allows the agent to deduct their 15% before the author sees any money. Of course, it allows unscrupulous agents to take a little more – something enabled by Argo Navis only providing sales reports to agents rather than directly to authors – but I digress.

. . . .

At this point you would be forgiven for thinking that no reputable literary agency would go for this. Well, I wish that was the case. Here’s a list of agencies that have signed up with Argo Navis:

• Writers House
• ICM Partners
• Carol Mann Agency
• Cynthia Cannell Literary Agency
• The Hartnett Agency
• Paul Bresnick Literary Agency
• Pinder Lane & Garon-Brooke Associates
• Curtis Brown (US)
• April Eberhardt Literary
• David Black Agency
• Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency
• Folio Literary Management
• Levine Greenberg Literary Agency
• Liza Royce Literary Agency
• Melanie Jackson Agency
• Janklow & Nesbit Associates
• Joëlle Delbourgo Associates
• Arcadia Literary Agency
• Harvey Klinger
• APA Talent and Literary Agency
• Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
• Irene Skolnick Literary Agency
• FinePrint Literary Management
• Donald Maass Literary Agency

. . . .

What’s In It For Authors?

There’s no upside to being funneled into this program. Participating authors get lower royalties, no sales reports, slower payments, and lose the ability to make quick changes to things like pricing – which is essential for marketing.

The money is the big one though, so I’d like to focus on that:

• An author self-publishing direct with KDP will receive up to 70% of list price.
• An author who self-publishes via Argo Navis will receive 41.65% of list price.

Link to the rest, including links to some Argo Navis books so you can check the covers and sales rank at Let’s Get Digital

From David Gaughran:

The Kindle’s share of the US market is far larger – with most observers pegging it at between 60% and 65% (most of the rest is split between Apple and Barnes & Noble, with Google, Sony, and Kobo combined perhaps getting around 5%). But how much of that have self-publishers grabbed?

Amazon is famously tight-lipped about such matters, so we have to put the pieces together ourselves. As such, the method is necessarily crude, but it’s the best I’ve got.

. . . .

In August 2011, Amazon launched the Kindle Indie Store, which showcases hand-picked work in a variety of genres from KDP authors. It also has a Top 100 list, ordered by Sales Rank, just like the regular Kindle Store Top 100.

By comparing the position of self-published work in the Kindle Indie Store Top 100 with it’s overall Sales Rank, we can get a pretty accurate idea of what proportion of the top-selling books are self-published.

When the Kindle Indie Store first launched, I tracked the Indie Top 100 for a few weeks. Invariably, the book that was #100 in the Indie chart was around #400 to #500 in the overall Kindle Store – meaning that, at the time, roughly 20% to 25% of the top-selling items in the Kindle Store were self-published e-books (and those numbers held up throughout the list).

. . . .

Today, you’ll see that the book at #100 in the Indie chart is #346 in the overall Kindle Store – meaning that 29% of the top-selling items in the Kindle Store are self-published e-books – and that proportion has been stable enough recently.

The Kindle Store contains more than just e-books, with things like digital subscriptions to the New York Times, magazines, blog subscriptions, and games regularly appearing in the Top 100. If you were to subtract all of those, and try and isolate e-books, that figure (easily) goes north of 30%.

This staggers me. 30% of the top-selling e-books on Amazon are self-published, beating out the biggest authors from the largest publishing houses in the world – as well as titles from Amazon’s own imprints (which aren’t included in the Indie Top 100).

This roughly tallies with the limited data we do have from Amazon, who recently announced the top-selling Kindle Books of 2013 (January to March). Seven of the Top 20 were self-published (and that’s not counting formerly self-published work, or Amazon imprint books).

. . . .

Now we can start putting the pieces together. When we factor in the respective market share of Amazon and Barnes & Noble (and Kobo), that leads to the following estimate (which might be conservative): self-publishers have captured 25% of the US e-book market.

Link to the rest at Let’s Get Digital

From the always-helpful David Gaughran:

The doom-mongers have been running wild on Twitter with the news that Amazon is to acquire Goodreads. Much of that nonsense is typical (hysterical) Amazon bashing, or reflexive defense of the status quo.

. . . .

There are some more reasonable fears about what this purchase entails. I would like to deal with these in turn, then discuss how I think this acquisition will be beneficial to writers – particularly self-publishers.

. . . .

1. Amazon will change Goodreads from being an independent home for readers to discuss the books they love

I can understand this fear – particularly if you are a Goodreads user, and spend a lot of time in the site. It’s not unreasonable to be worried about what happens next with a site that you love. I also understand the feeling of ownership that (rightly) develops in a community like Goodreads – especially one that has literally built the site into what it is today.

No-one has a crystal ball here, but all the indications are that Goodreads will retain its independence. That point was stressed in a blog post from Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler.

. . . .

If you are more worried about Amazon’s intentions, here’s Amazon VP Russ Grandinetti in a revealing interview with PaidContent’s Laura Hazard Owen:

Our mentality here is to first do no harm, and make sure that if we’re going to do integrations, users genuinely find it to be a big benefit.

Again, you might say talk is cheap, that actions speak louder than words. Well, let’s look at Amazon’s actions.

Amazon purchased a 40% stake in LibraryThing seven years ago. It bought Shelfari outright five years ago. It bought IMDB.com fifteen years ago. The independence and brand of those communities has not been compromised in all that time.

. . . .

4. Goodreads will become a site exclusively for Kindle owners

The statements above are quite clear that this isn’t going to happen, and that Goodreads will remain a home for anyone who loves books – however they read them.

It’s also clear that Amazon and Goodreads will be working together to provide extra features for Kindle users. Owners of other devices may gripe about that, but I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. This purchase has enabled the new features not prevented them for other devices. Amazon can hardly be expected to provide the technical know-how on how to integrate features onto EPUB devices they haven’t designed or manufactured.

. . . .

How does this acquisition help self-publishers?

I see three primary benefits:

1. More advertising opportunities on Goodreads, and a better return on investment. Goodreads already has an advertising program, but it’s hardly the best ROI in the business. Amazon has the experience and know-how to improve the program – and self-publishers are always looking for more (effective) places to advertise their books.

2. Amazon’s recommendation algorithms will be vastly improved with all the data that Goodreads has been collecting. Anything that makes Amazon a more trusted source for book recommendations levels the playing field for self-publishers – the vast majority of whom make 90% (or more) of their sales at Amazon, despite the Kindle only having around 60% of the market.

Link to the rest at Let’s Get Digital

From David Gaughran:

There seems to be a view in certain self-congratulatory circles that publishers have finally got to grips with the digital revolution, that they have weathered the fiercest part of the storm, and that they are well-placed now not just to survive, but to thrive.

There are innumerable problems with that view, of course, but today I’d like to focus on one core truth of this brave new world that publishers have failed to grasp.

Namely, there are only two essential components to publishing in the digital era: the writer and the reader.

All of the old middlemen – agents, publishers, distributors, retailers – have to justify their cut, as the writer can now bypass them and go direct to readers. The only middlemen (IMO) currently making a compelling case for their cut are retailers. Self-publishers are more than happy to fork over 30% to Amazon to access their ever-expanding customer base.

Publishers seem determined to move in the opposite direction: making the proposition of publishing with them less attractive rather than more attractive, reducing advances, worsening contract terms, and treating writers as marks rather than partners – despite whatever guff accompanies the launch of their latest initiatives.

. . . .

Dymocks-owned D Publishing is Toast

As we have seen from the Random House debacle, public pressure can have an effect, which is why I’ll keep blogging about Author Solutions. In case you think that this kind of pressure can only effect the more media-friendly stories involving traditional publishers, think again.

D Publishing was launched in December 2011 (by Australian bookselling chain Dymocks) with some of the most oppressive terms I’ve seen to date. The good news is that Dymocks has announced the closure of D Publishing, effective by month’s end.

I don’t know the full details behind the decision, but I can’t help but feel that the massive public outcry over the terms steered many writers away.

Penguin has been more successful at shrugging off criticism of Author Solutions. Indeed, Penguin CEO John Makinson recently said he was “proud” of the purchase.

Link to the rest at Let’s Get Digital

From David Gaughran:

There’s an old adage that bestsellers are chosen rather than made, and there’s some truth to that. The amount a publisher splurges on the advance has to be recouped before the book turns a profit. The more money that has to be recouped, the greater the marketing budget.

Sleeper hits are the exception for a reason. It’s a lot easier to hit the bestseller lists when you are on the front table of every single Barnes & Noble than if you are spine-out at the back of a handful of stores (or gathering dust in the warehouse).

It often comes as a surprise to those outside publishing that these bookstore spots are bought and sold, that whether a book is face-out or spine-out (or on the front table) is something that tends to be agreed in the contract between the publisher and the retailer. But when you explain how valuable this “real estate” is, it all makes sense to them (even if the scales fall from their eyes a little).

It’s very different on Amazon – where a weird form of meritocracy decides which books are visible, rather than backroom deals only available to large publishers. While Amazon hasn’t done away with “virtual co-op” completely, the vast majority of slots where books are recommended to customers are open to any book, author, or publisher – if they perform well enough.

When it comes to books, Amazon’s basic philosophy is simple: it will always (attempt to) show you the book you are most likely to purchase. The system is largely agnostic, meaning Amazon doesn’t care if the book it displays is published by you, me, them, or Penguin, and it also doesn’t care if the book is 99c or $14.99 – it will show you the book you are most likely to purchase.

. . . .

For customers with “purer” browsing histories though, the recommendation engine can be spookily accurate (and is widely considered to be the best in the e-commerce world). And, of course, its accuracy increases every time you browse, purchase, and read, and with every huge chunk of investment Amazon makes in honing its algorithms.

. . . .

In the case of all three of Amazon’s primary competitors, it’s quite clear that they want to train customer attention on that “virtual co-op” – the prominent spots that large publishers have purchased to hawk their books.

I’m sure these retailers make good money from auctioning off these spots, and I’m sure they are also quite pleased that the books they are granting this all-important visibility to are ones priced at $9.99 rather than 99c.

But it’s a huge mistake. Explaining why will require a little detour to Silicon Valley.

The reason that Google beat Yahoo is simple: relevance. While Yahoo auctioned off advertising spots to the highest bidder, Google’s AdWords made the relevancy of the ad (decided by the click-thru rate) a key component in deciding which ads got the prime real estate above search results.

Google knew that approach might make them less money in the short term, but it also knew that, over time, users would trust the ads more (i.e. click on them more), if they were more relevant. And we all know what happened next.

I’m sure Amazon was watching that battle as their recommendation engine takes the same approach: it always shows readers the books they are most likely to purchase even if that recommendation makes them less money than the alternative.

Amazon knows that if its customers trust the recommendations, they will act on them more often (and spend more money). They know that will make more in the long run.

Link to the rest at Let’s Get Digital

From David Gaughran:

Simon & Schuster has launched a self-publishing operation, Archway Publishing, contracting one of the most disreputable players in the business to run the show: Author Solutions.

. . . .

But what if you need proper editing? Fear not! Simon & Schuster is here to help. For just $0.035 a word, you can have a thorough edit of your book. Which sounds cheap until you realize that a standard 80,000 word novel would cost you $2,800. So, in actual fact, the cheapest package, plus their edit, will set you back $4,799 for a standard length book.

As if that wasn’t enough, Simon & Schuster will also take half of your e-book royalties – after Amazon and the other retailers take their cut – and pay pennies for print sales.

. . . .

Author Solutions is the umbrella for (and owner of) several seriously shady self-publishing service companies (or vanity presses, if you prefer) – such as Author House, Xlibris, iUniverse, and Trafford.

Each of these companies has managed to achieve disreputable status on their own, but together they have screwed over more than 150,000 writers. Going through the full history of their rip-off schemes would require a book, rather than a blog post, so I’ll stick to the highlights.

The formidable Emily Suess has been covering Author Solutions for some time:

The short list of recurring issues includes: making formerly out-of-print works available for sale without the author’s consent, improperly reporting royalty information, non-payment of royalties, breach of contract, predatory and harassing sales calls, excessive markups on review and advertising services, failure to deliver marketing services as promised, telling customers their add-ons will only cost hundreds of dollars and then charging their credit cards thousands of dollars, ignoring customer complaints, shaming and banning customers who go public with their stories . . .

. . . .

At the time of the purchase, some commentators expressed hope that Penguin would clean up this cesspool. Instead, Penguin gave Kevin Weiss – the head of Author Solutions – a seat on the board.

A seat on the board!

And the scammy behavior hasn’t stopped; in fact, some of it is getting worse. I’ve received reports of Author Solutions staff calling prospective customers and asking if they want to be “published by Penguin.” Yes, they went there.

. . . .

Before you say that any writer who gets suckered only has themselves to blame, you must consider that Author Solutions is extremely disingenuous about how they target customers.

They prey on people who don’t understand the industry. Their whole business model is predicated on customer ignorance – and they are relentless at exploiting that, hounding people with incessant calls, pushing every emotional button they can think of, until they crack.

And it works. The average customer spends $5,000 getting their book published – which is crazy money – and Emily Suess has received reports of writers being tricked out of tens of thousands of dollars. After all that, the writers don’t sell anything anyway, and what little they do make is often delayed or unpaid altogether.

I can’t say it any plainer: Author Solutions are in the business of ripping people off.

Link to the rest at Let’s Get Digital

David’s warnings should suffice to steer anyone away from Author Solutions. However, if you need a second source, Victoria Strauss comments on Writer Beware:

It’s not an exaggeration to say that, right now, ASI is the most hated name in the self-publishing services world.

. . . .

ASI is the only self-pub service provider about which we get regular complaints.

. . . .

My problem is with how S&S and others have chosen to dabble in self-publishing–by choosing to work with a company that exploits authors through deceptive PR tactics, misleading rhetoric, and terrible customer service. ASI’s poor reputation is not a secret–it’s all over the Internet. Could S&S and others not have chosen a more complaint-free service provider–or, even, created the service themselves?

Link to the rest at Writer Beware

David Gaughran writes a comprehensive refutation of the end-of-world assessment of self-publishing by British author and hysteric Ewan Morrison. What’s most interesting to PG is not the refutation of Morrison’s flat-earth rantings, but the usual (for David) intelligent and insightful thoughts on self-publishing:

 I could list the facts, quote the data, and highlight the numerous points where reality collides with Morrison’s hypothesis, but he appears to place little stock in facts, data, and reality. Even so, he might take a glance at the Kindle Boards thread listing the burgeoning number of self-publishers who have sold 50,000 e-books (177, for the click-lazy).

. . . .

Newsflash: digital self-publishing (I refuse to use the term “self e-publishing”) is here to stay. Authors are trying it in rising numbers, attracted by the relative ease of the process, the ability to distribute anywhere on the planet, and the opportunity to earn 70% royalty rates. And, as the above link to Kindle Boards attests, the number doing extremely well is expanding at a furious rate.

But we know all that. The viability of self-publishing was debated in the US at length last year, but no-one tries to tell you that you’ll never make any money from self-publishing anymore. At least, that’s the case in the US. In the UK, it seems that argument is only starting.

. . . .

Morrison seems to think that the decision of writers like Amanda Hocking in the US or Mark Edwards & Louise Voss in the UK to accept eye-popping advances for previously self-published titles is some proof of the ephemeral nature of self-publishing.

The logic is torturous (and it was painful the first time this meme surfaced, last year), but the obvious point that Morrison misses is that these writers were able to take the books that were roundly rejected, self-publish them, build impressive readerships, and leverage that into the kind of deal that most writers will never see: a life-changing advance, and huge marketing support.

That’s proof of the bona fides of self-publishing, not the opposite.

. . . .

If Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress, Tumblr and Pinterest disappeared tomorrow, self-publishers would continue to sell books. It might be harder for readers to share information about the books they enjoy – whether self-published or not – but I’m sure they would find a way.

This gets to the heart of Morrison’s misconception of how self-publishers use social media. It’s not about selling books, it’s about making connections. The only thing that has ever really sold books is word-of-mouth.

The difference today is that social media can act as an accelerant to the spreading of that “word.”

Link to the rest at Let’s Get Digital

From David Gaughran on IndieReader:

Penguin’s parent company, Pearson, has announced the purchase of Author Solutions for $116m – news which has shocked writers, especially given Author Solutions’ long history of providing questionable services at staggering prices.

Author Solutions are the dominant player in the self-publishing services market – via their subsidiaries Author House, Xlibris, Trafford, and iUniverse – and had been looking for a buyer for several months.

. . . .

What does Author Solutions bring to the table? Well, for starters, around $100m in annual revenue. Roughly two-thirds of that money comes from the sale of services to writers, and only one-third from the royalties generated by the sale of their books.

Pause for a moment and consider that statistic. Penguin isn’t purchasing a company which provides real value to writers. They are purchasing an operation skilled at milking writers.

. . . .

For example, Author House will provide you with a “web-optimized press release” for the bargain price of $1,199. In case it isn’t obvious, you would likely receive greater promotional value from setting fire to that money on YouTube.

. . . .

Before they leave the clutches of Author Solutions, however, writers are subjected to never-ending phone calls hawking a string of overpriced, useless services, including the press releases described above. As such, the average customer spends around $5,000 over their “lifetime” with the company,but only sells 150 books.

. . . .

The last time I blogged about the Author Solutions subsidiary iUniverse, I highlighted a typical marketing move. Just before Christmas last year, iUniverse mailed their existing customers with a very special “deal” where they offered to turn their print books into e-books and upload them to the various retailers for free.

The catch was that customers would then have to fork over 50% of their royalties from every single sale to iUniverse. Needless to say, formatting and uploading is a trivial task.

Link to the rest at IndieReader

Friend of the blog David Gaughran eviscerates the Authors Guild and its letter to the DoJ about the ebook price-fixing lawsuit:

It’s official: the Authors Guild has lost the plot. In their (seemingly endless) quest to smear Amazon, they don’t care who they wheel out as an injured party. Spoiler alert: it’s PublishAmerica. Yep, you read that right.

…

Unsurprisingly, the Authors Guild’s letter barely mentions the voluminous (actual) evidence that the Department of Justice have compiled in relation to the price-fixing allegations, but instead focuses on a company not named as a defendant in this case: Amazon.

…

How Amazon Captured 90% of the Market

From the AG’s letter:

It was precisely this practice – selling frontlist e-books at below cost to discourage and destroy competition – that helped Amazon capture a commanding 90% of the U.S. e-book market.

Completely untrue. When Amazon released the first Kindle in November 2007, there was no real e-book market to speak of. According to the American Association of Publishers, e-books were only responsible for 0.6% of trade book sales at the time. The market was tiny and Amazon’s only competition was a half-hearted offering from Sony, which was plagued with supply problems and limited title selection.

Amazon essentially created the e-book market in America. By the time Apple and Barnes & Noble had woken up to the fact that there was real money to be made in e-books, the market had grown by 600% (to 3.2% of all trade books sold) – with most of those new customers buying Kindles.

In short, Amazon got to (an estimated) 90% of the market because they were the only ones really playing the game, and the market was so small that a focused offering could make serious inroads.

The Authors Guild & PublishAmerica

The rest of the letter is just as bad, and I’m not going to waste time going through it all. …

Instead, I want to focus on one particular section – the Authors Guild’s summary of the tactics Amazon used to establish CreateSpace (formerly known as BookSurge, who Amazon purchased in 2005).

Quoting from the original letter:

More importantly and profitably to Amazon, by forcing iUniverse and other author centered on-demand service providers to use BookSurge, Amazon severely constrained effective competition for its own author centered on-demand service provider, which became known as CreateSpace in 2009. Amazon’s vertical integration of on-demand printing eliminated the ability of iUniverse, PublishAmerica, XLibris and others to offer authors better royalties when selling through Amazon. CreateSpace appears to have thrived ever since.[Emphasis mine]

The first time I read that, I was in shock. The Authors Guild are so desperate to tar Amazon that they are willing to roll out PublishAmerica as a victim. And the more I think about it, the more mad I get. Really? PublishAmerica? Are you serious?

For those unaware of the checkered history of PublishAmerica, a quick summary:

1. They are one of only two organizations to earn the dubious honor of having their own sub-forum on Absolute Write’s Bewares & Background Checks (the other being Robert Fletcher’s infamous web of companies).

2. Preditors and Editors have a lengthy entry warning writers away.

3. The Better Business Bureau rates PublishAmerica as an “F”.

4. The leading industry watchdog – Writer Beware – regularly cover PublishAmerica’s various attempts to squeeze money out of their writers (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, and here – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg).

5. PublishAmerica are now the subject of a class-action suit, the allegations being very familiar to anyone who has followed the company (full complaint can be read here).

In short, PublishAmerica is probably the last place I would recommend to a writer.

However, the Authors Guild feels that PublishAmerica’s rights have been trampled upon. If Amazon hadn’t been such a bully, PublishAmerica could have gained more customers. Will Amazon stop at nothing in their evil quest to take over the world?

…

The Authors Guild should be ashamed of themselves.

There is much more in David’s post on his blog: The Authors Guild Doesn’t Serve Writers. In particular, I clipped David’s excellent summary of the events leading up to this latest nonsense from the Authors Guild and his exposé of the cozy relationship between the Guild and iUniverse, both of which are essential background for fully appreciating the game the Guild is playing.

I want to call attention to David’s point about how Amazon achieved its position in the ebook industry because the publishing industry and its sycophants continually try to elide that bit of knowledge from the history. And, of course, David has done yeoman’s work in rounding up the links necessary to get a feel for the nature of PublishAmerica, the victim in the Guild’s alternate reality.

-Guest post by William Ockham

David Gaughran writes his own letter to the Department of Justice concerning the proposed settlement with some of the defendants in the price-fixing suit against Apple and five major publishers. For other DOJ letters with a perspective much different than David’s, see here and here.

To: John R. Read, Chief, Litigation III Section, United States Department of Justice, 450 5th St NW, Suite 4000, Washington DC 20530

Dear Mr. Read,

I’m sure you will have already received plenty of letters regarding the terms of the proposed settlement; I would like to apologize at the outset for adding to the pile.

I felt it necessary to contact you, however, as I fear that the multiple letter-writing campaigns aimed at influencing the presiding judge may give the impression that authors and publishers (and readers) are uniformly opposed to the terms of the settlement.

As an author and publisher (and reader) I can assure you that this is not the case.

Unlike some of the publishers named in the suit, I’m not part of a major media conglomerate that owns newspapers and television stations around the globe. I’m a one-man operation who set up a publishing company to release my own books.

I’m far from unique. There are thousands and thousands of writers just like me – writers who couldn’t get their books published by the conventional route who then self-published their work and reached thousands of readers.

A few short years ago, this was not a viable path. Self-publishing was expensive, difficult, and risky. The rise of e-books enabled thousands of writers like me to bypass the middlemen – literary agents, publishers, distributors – and sell direct to retailers and readers. Without the presence of all these middlemen taking a cut, I can sell books very cheaply and still make a good profit.

This disintermediation benefits authors and readers directly. Readers have more books to choose from, and when they choose books published by independent authors, they are almost always significantly less expensive than titles from the defending publishers.

It’s similar to what has transpired in many businesses since the rise of the Internet. All kinds of middlemen – such as travel agents and insurance brokers – have gone from being indispensable to optional, and face the according challenging business conditions.

Publishers and literary agents are no different. Writers no longer need them to reach readers. Instead, they can publish their own work, sell books at cheaper prices, and make more money.

The kind of disruption caused by the Internet is often messy. Not everyone comes out a winner. As such, vocal resistance is to be expected, especially from those who do quite well under the status quo.

One such group are best-sellers like Scott Turow, the President of the Authors Guild – an organization that claims to represent the interests of writers. Another such group are literary agents like Gail Hochman, the President of the Association of Authors’ Representatives – an organization of literary agents, which also claims to represent the interests of writers.

To be clear, neither organization speaks for me. And, in my opinion, it’s fear of change, fear of competition, that drives literary agents and publishers (and best-selling authors) to support the Agency model and disingenuously claim it benefits readers.

. . . .

The world is changing and they don’t like it. Amazon, as the prime mover in facilitating those changes, is the primary target of their ire. I don’t share their apparent hatred of Amazon. From where I stand, Amazon has done more to make self-publishing a viable path than any other company (something which benefits authors through increased paths to publication and readers through a greater selection and lower prices).

I don’t think Amazon has done this because they have any favorable disposition towards self-publishing per se, rather I think that this was a (happy, for me) by-product of their support of the digital revolution and their customer focus.

More than any other company, Amazon made e-reading attractive, widespread, and cheap. This has come at the expense of reading books in print – a market which was controlled by companies such as the publishers named in the suit.

What is replacing it is something very different: an open market with thousands and thousands of competitors for the defending publishers (and those competitors are able to compete largely because of Amazon’s self-publishing platform – KDP – where independent authors can set their own prices and reach readers all over the world).

. . . .

It seems the defending publishers sought to slow this transition by forcing higher prices on Amazon and their customers (and by extension, the customers of every other retailer). In my opinion, this shows contempt, both for the readers who purchase their books and for the authors whose sales have suffered as a result of these artificially higher prices.

Link to the rest at Let’s Get Digital